Digital strategy starting to pay off for Nintendo, claims Fils-Aime

Fire Emblem has sold 80,000 digital copies.

Nintendo's long overdue embrace of digital distribution via 3DS and Wii U has been a huge success, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has told GamesIndustry.

"We have 15 Nintendo-published titles available, both physically and digitally [on the 3DS]," said Fils-Aime. "So far in 2013, of those 15 available in this format, 11 percent of sales have come through full digital downloads of those games."

This includes 80,000 of Fire Emblem's 240,000 total sales in the US coming digitally.

The 3DS platform is going from strength to strength, currently outpacing the sales achievements of the original DS. In two years, eight million units have been sold in the US, one million more than the DS managed.

67 per cent of 3DS owners have also connected their handheld to the internet, with the majority of these having downloaded something from the eShop.

"Through that connected experience, consumers have downloaded more than 41 million items from the eShop - everything from full games to applications like Nintendo video, DLC, demos, free items, and more," says Fils-Aime.

Fils-Aime also revealed that US sales of Luigi's Mansion 2 stand at 415,000 copies.